Friday, November 19, 2010

Mike's bag broke and carried a potato bag on his head for two days of travel.

Looks easy next to that guy!

We then went on another awesome volcano mission:

Volcan de Santa Maria

Elevation: 12,139 ft.

Watching all the distant volcanoes erupt.

The highest rock on this non-active volcano.

Then we went back to Quetzaltenango where Alice made us and incredible

curry dish called Balti curry. Very spicy!

Jeff made roasted garlic and rosemary bread.

We went to Mexico by bus so that the boys can renew there visas.

This is the introduction of Sonia. A 24 year old Swiss-German traveler that was

crossing the Mexican border at the same time as us. She spent the first night with us because

there was a public transportation strike and we got stuck in a not so nice town.

The street market in San Cristobal is just huge.

Jamming with my new guitar.

Saying goodbye to the great people we met in San Cristobal where we had sing alongs around the campfire every night. What an awesome time we had.

Upon our arrival back into Guatemala we set off to hike, Tujumulco, the highest peak in Central America. The trail was moderate and absolutely beautiful.

We camped at 13,400 ft.. We made a big fire and boiled up some ponche (apples, pears, cloves, cinnamon, ginger, and of course RUM).

Fighting off the 25* F weather we hovered around the fire and listened to a 1973 Grateful Dead show on Jason's awesome mini-speaker.

We where the highest people in Central America at sunrise. 14,000ft. That is the shadow of the mountain we are on top of.. Full moon as well.

Not a bad place to hackeysack.

The descent back down was just as breathtaking.

We then went back to Lago Atitlan to get our bikes and get back on the rode.

I got a bad haircut by a friend a few days earlier. Sonia spent the hour long

ferry ride trimming and fixing my hair.

After three weeks without our bikes we finally made it back to Panajachel and packed up our gear to hit the road again. We had had enough of those overcrowded chicken buses.

We cycled for two days to a town called San Andres.

The guitar is now a main piece of equipment.

This 20 mile dirt trail was really fun!

Descending into a town called San Andres.

Had a light spill in the loose mud. Or is that donkey dung?

We went straight to a non-profit bike shop called Mayapedal. This shop gets bikes donated from the United States and Canada and fixes them up for locals to use. It's a one of a kind type of place around these parts of the world. Being that there is no hotel in this town the volunteers that run Mayapedal let us crash for two days and do a lot of work on our bikes as well.

Jason worked hard piecing a bike together for Sonia. Here he is sweating in the storage room trying to match up parts that would work for the frame that he had picked out.

Bruce (a volunteer at mayapedal), also helped a lot in the building of her bike.

An absolutely incredible job done by Jason got a perfect touring bike together for Sonia in about 30 hours. Her bike has parts from 36 different bikes. Jason even made her storage boxes out of kitty litter boxes.

Now it's just time to see how well she can use it. It will be some hard first days but we have time to take it slow until she is in better shape.

Saying goodbye at mayapedal. Thanks Bruce, Julian and Eric for letting us stay.

All ready to go but now five strong. We are going to own the road before too long.

Didn't cycle for that long before we found a roadside stand selling cornbread and corn on the cob.